| 1. "Focusing your life solely on making a buck shows a certain poverty of ambition..." Barack Obama .....
2. "One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." By Thomas Sowell

A few days before Astricon 2017, TMCnet's Rich Tehrani, Telespeak and Asterisk Community's David Duffet and MongoTel's Moshe BT recorded a video conversation with me about cloud communications gatherings, starting an ITSP, and how VoIP companies can leverage artificial intelligence and other new technologies for business revenue and software development growth. Moshe BT, tagged as the Jewish Steve Jobs of Israel by "Voice of Israel" and also known as founder of now three multi-million dollar telecom / tech companies joined two other well-known IP communications master minds and me. David Duffet, the "one who helps the geeks speak" Director of the Worldwide Asterisk Community and the only certified Zig Ziglar Legacy Certified Coach and Trainer in UK and Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMCnet with 12,300 + organic Twitter followers, and who has helped millions of cloud communications communications companies start and grow successfully since 1999, the year of the first ITEXPO conference.

MongoTel's Moshe clued us into a new project of his, not yet launched, to take telecom completely out of SIP, with zero per minute and zero connection fees. It will include certain security features and as such projects evolve, ways of monetizing will arise.

Early in the talk, Rich Tehrani shared thought-provoking realities, "VoIP, more or less, transformed communications. Now, we are seeing focus on business transformation, becoming more efficient...help companies compete with new entrants whose goal is to put every other business out of business. Who would have thought that Ford and GM would be disrupted by an app that connects people with a stranger in a car that gives them a ride? Some crazy entrepreneur stuck a bunch of laptop batteries inside a car chassis and made an electric car and now the entire industry's gone electric...Germany and Detroit are behind the curve on two fronts."

Moshe replied, "If you don't disrupt yourself, you will get disrupted. Kind of like Apple disrupted their laptops with their iPads, and now with their cellular watch, they want to disrupt their iPhones. Kind of like Amazon's Kindle disrupted books themselves."

From there, Rich spearheaded a new topic cyber security and how it's a new world, not like it used to be. Even big company CEOs and CFOs are being bilked by simple email fraud.

David Duffet added, going back to the previous topic, that Asterisk is popular as a tool of disruption. Asterisk was helpful in the adoption of SIP (session initiation protocol) and now again helpful with webRTC and Internet of Things.

ITEXPO 2018 is Feb. 14 - 16 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a warm and popular place for that cold time of the year. Rich mentions in the talk there will be tracks or pavilions like * SD-WAN, Managed Service Provider, Asterisk World, Telecom Reseller Week, IDEA Showcase (like TedX for tech and telecom), Business Intelligence, ** Blockchain (public ledgers that disrupt many industries), and more.

August 22, 2017, Dean Bubley discussed the blockchain trend on his Disruptive blog. His stance on the technology is "pragmatic optimism."

He says, "Blockchain technology has many possible touch-points with the telecoms industry, from data-integrity management to back-office systems to billing - but maturity will take time. Some of the Utopian 'it'll change the world' and 'telcos are obsolete' rhetoric is overblown. Distributed ledgers will have many uses and opportunities in telecoms/networking - but are unlikely to overturn or radically-disrupt industry structures, at least on a 5-10 year view."

David Duffet answered my question about the planned Bicom Systems presentation at Astricon 2017 titled "How to Start and Run an ITSP." He shared, "You definitely need those visionary people that are looking toward the next thing, going after the early adopters of new technology and executing it. At the same time, you need the people who keep on keeping on, optimizing models based on existing technology."

Moshe shared, "Founder of Skype said that telecom is 100 years old, and telephone numbers will be dead in a certain number of years, and it's still not dead. The reason that it's not dead is that nobody actually killed it."

We move on to discuss how traditional VoIP companies can work with IoT, connected cars, blockchain, artificial intelligence and such to keep their evolving companies alive. David Duffet notes that Asterisk can be a building block for these things, such as not what is being said in voice but how it is being said, like the context of voice to judge certain things like medical conditions.

So the world of medicine as well as any other industry more fully integrates with the power of voice. For example, Parkinson's Disease can be diagnosed in this manner earlier than any other physical examination. Duffet worked with Aculab several years ago and remembered many conversations about speaker verification and not recognizing what is said but recognizing who is saying it. He flippantly predicted that at some stage of a sales discussion the potential customer's voice could be analyzed to tell you right away when they are ready to buy. I'm sure this is possible today.

Mongotel's Moshe noted that the emphasis is finally heading to focus on customers' needs instead how cool the new technology is. He gives advice to VoIP companies to do exactly that... such as if they need an alarm system that works with the VoIP service, provide it. In addition, add the necessary security for that system. Adjust the CRM per the company's size and needs.

Tehrani believes companies whose main service involves cloud communications will benefit when they research new technologies such as cyber security, office applications and others to understand how they can leverage them for their customers. One's geo location has much to do with which technology services to add like IoT for smart farming to save money and improve crop production in the Midwest US. Two other things to pay attention to are analytics and what your kids are doing like their texting craze was the path that eventually led to business Slack and their big interest in Snapchat, Youtube and Vine have led to more interest in using video in business. Think webRTC and all types of conferencing! Tehrani says to devote time studying trends every day to stay on top.

In regards to business continuity and disaster preparedness in the midst of the 2017 hurricanes, Duffet believes that SIP and partnering up with a company like Mongotel play a positive part in staying up and running. Open source telephony platforms such as Asterisk make it easy to do this at low or practically zero cost.

"Cloud has changed the dynamic for disasters. It allows companies to have a flexible way to take communications that at one moment goes to a phone on a desk to be forwarded to devices in practically any location such as hotel lounge, your cell phone (in the case where cell towers work during a disaster)," Tehrani noted.

Speaking of cell towers, the ones in Puerto Rico did not fare well, he says, because they were not set to withstand the strength of the winds; whereas, the towers in Texas were, so more damage occurred in Puerto Rico.

It was reported on Sept 20, Hurricane Maria rammed directly into Puerto Rico early Wednesday morning as a powerful Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds. It's the strongest storm to hit the island in 80 years. In late August, 2017, Hurricane Harvey was forecast to make landfall as a hurricane somewhere over the Texas Coast. ... Extreme wind warnings were issued for landfalling major hurricanes with winds of 115 mph or higher. Harvey was forecast to have winds in the eyewall between 115 and 130 mph!

Be sure to watch Moshe BT, Rich Tehrani, David Duffet and I discuss crucial topics to cloud communications companies: how to make your VoIP company more helpful to 2017 and future customers and disaster preparedness and the IP and cloud communications and technology events that will help us all meet the experts, do the research and develop new business and gain and retain customers to do both.

*SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network, a specific application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology applied to WAN (wide area networks) connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centers – over large geographic distances.

** Blockchain is a method of managing electronic cash without a central administrator among people who know nothing about one another.

A few days before Astricon 2017, TMCnet's Rich Tehrani, Telespeak and Asterisk Community's David Duffet and MongoTel's Moshe BT recorded a video conversation with me about cloud communications gatherings, starting an ITSP, and how VoIP companies can leverage artificial intelligence and other new technologies for business revenue and software development growth. Moshe BT, tagged as the Jewish Steve Jobs of Israel by \"Voice of Israel\" and also known as founder of now three multi-million dollar telecom / tech companies joined two other well-known IP communications master minds and me. David Duffet, the \"one who helps the geeks speak\" Director of the Worldwide Asterisk Community and the only certified Zig Ziglar Legacy Certified Coach and Trainer in UK and Rich Tehrani, CEO of TMCnet with 12,300 + organic Twitter followers, and who has helped millions of cloud communications communications companies start and grow successfully since 1999, the year of the first ITEXPO conference.

\n

\n

MongoTel's Moshe clued us into a new project of his, not yet launched, to take telecom completely out of SIP, with zero per minute and zero connection fees. It will include certain security features and as such projects evolve, ways of monetizing will arise.

Early in the talk, Rich Tehrani shared thought-provoking realities, \"VoIP, more or less, transformed communications. Now, we are seeing focus on business transformation, becoming more efficient...help companies compete with new entrants whose goal is to put every other business out of business. Who would have thought that Ford and GM would be disrupted by an app that connects people with a stranger in a car that gives them a ride? Some crazy entrepreneur stuck a bunch of laptop batteries inside a car chassis and made an electric car and now the entire industry's gone electric...Germany and Detroit are behind the curve on two fronts.\"

\n

\n

Moshe replied, \"If you don't disrupt yourself, you will get disrupted. Kind of like Apple disrupted their laptops with their iPads, and now with their cellular watch, they want to disrupt their iPhones. Kind of like Amazon's Kindle disrupted books themselves.\"

\n

\n

From there, Rich spearheaded a new topic cyber security and how it's a new world, not like it used to be. Even big company CEOs and CFOs are being bilked by simple email fraud.

\n

\n

David Duffet added, going back to the previous topic, that Asterisk is popular as a tool of disruption. Asterisk was helpful in the adoption of SIP (session initiation protocol) and now again helpful with webRTC and Internet of Things.

\n

\n

ITEXPO 2018 is Feb. 14 - 16 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, a warm and popular place for that cold time of the year. Rich mentions in the talk there will be tracks or pavilions like * SD-WAN, Managed Service Provider, Asterisk World, Telecom Reseller Week, IDEA Showcase (like TedX for tech and telecom), Business Intelligence, ** Blockchain (public ledgers that disrupt many industries), and more.

\n

August 22, 2017, Dean Bubley discussed the blockchain trend on his Disruptive blog. His stance on the technology is \"pragmatic optimism.\"

\n

He says, \"Blockchain technology has many possible touch-points with the telecoms industry, from data-integrity management to back-office systems to billing - but maturity will take time. Some of the Utopian 'it'll change the world' and 'telcos are obsolete' rhetoric is overblown. Distributed ledgers will have many uses and opportunities in telecoms/networking - but are unlikely to overturn or radically-disrupt industry structures, at least on a 5-10 year view.\"

\n

David Duffet answered my question about the planned Bicom Systems presentation at Astricon 2017 titled \"How to Start and Run an ITSP.\" He shared, \"You definitely need those visionary people that are looking toward the next thing, going after the early adopters of new technology and executing it. At the same time, you need the people who keep on keeping on, optimizing models based on existing technology.\"

\n

\n

Moshe shared, \"Founder of Skype said that telecom is 100 years old, and telephone numbers will be dead in a certain number of years, and it's still not dead. The reason that it's not dead is that nobody actually killed it.\"

\n

\n

We move on to discuss how traditional VoIP companies can work with IoT, connected cars, blockchain, artificial intelligence and such to keep their evolving companies alive. David Duffet notes that Asterisk can be a building block for these things, such as not what is being said in voice but how it is being said, like the context of voice to judge certain things like medical conditions.

\n

\n

So the world of medicine as well as any other industry more fully integrates with the power of voice. For example, Parkinson's Disease can be diagnosed in this manner earlier than any other physical examination. Duffet worked with Aculab several years ago and remembered many conversations about speaker verification and not recognizing what is said but recognizing who is saying it. He flippantly predicted that at some stage of a sales discussion the potential customer's voice could be analyzed to tell you right away when they are ready to buy. I'm sure this is possible today.

\n

\n

Mongotel's Moshe noted that the emphasis is finally heading to focus on customers' needs instead how cool the new technology is. He gives advice to VoIP companies to do exactly that... such as if they need an alarm system that works with the VoIP service, provide it. In addition, add the necessary security for that system. Adjust the CRM per the company's size and needs.

\n

\n

Tehrani believes companies whose main service involves cloud communications will benefit when they research new technologies such as cyber security, office applications and others to understand how they can leverage them for their customers. One's geo location has much to do with which technology services to add like IoT for smart farming to save money and improve crop production in the Midwest US. Two other things to pay attention to are analytics and what your kids are doing like their texting craze was the path that eventually led to business Slack and their big interest in Snapchat, Youtube and Vine have led to more interest in using video in business. Think webRTC and all types of conferencing! Tehrani says to devote time studying trends every day to stay on top.

\n

\n

In regards to business continuity and disaster preparedness in the midst of the 2017 hurricanes, Duffet believes that SIP and partnering up with a company like Mongotel play a positive part in staying up and running. Open source telephony platforms such as Asterisk make it easy to do this at low or practically zero cost.

\n

\n

\"Cloud has changed the dynamic for disasters. It allows companies to have a flexible way to take communications that at one moment goes to a phone on a desk to be forwarded to devices in practically any location such as hotel lounge, your cell phone (in the case where cell towers work during a disaster),\" Tehrani noted.

\n

\n

Speaking of cell towers, the ones in Puerto Rico did not fare well, he says, because they were not set to withstand the strength of the winds; whereas, the towers in Texas were, so more damage occurred in Puerto Rico.

\n

\n

It was reported on Sept 20, Hurricane Maria rammed directly into Puerto Rico early Wednesday morning as a powerful Category 4 storm with 140 mph winds. It's the strongest storm to hit the island in 80 years. In late August, 2017, Hurricane Harvey was forecast to make landfall as a hurricane somewhere over the Texas Coast. ... Extreme wind warnings were issued for landfalling major hurricanes with winds of 115 mph or higher. Harvey was forecast to have winds in the eyewall between 115 and 130 mph!

\n

\n

Be sure to watch Moshe BT, Rich Tehrani, David Duffet and I discuss crucial topics to cloud communications companies: how to make your VoIP company more helpful to 2017 and future customers and disaster preparedness and the IP and cloud communications and technology events that will help us all meet the experts, do the research and develop new business and gain and retain customers to do both.

\n

\n

*SD-WAN is a software-defined wide area network, a specific application of software-defined networking (SDN) technology applied to WAN (wide area networks) connections, which are used to connect enterprise networks – including branch offices and data centers – over large geographic distances.

\n

\n

** Blockchain is a method of managing electronic cash without a central administrator among people who know nothing about one another.